Word: isn
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...inducing, much of it sheer enjoyment. That is depressingly rare. Not for Safire the cloddish metaphors, arch constructions, one-sentence paragraphs and dreary wonkery that are the stock in trade of too many modern American columnists. He was of that generation of inky-fingered wretches who remember that it isn't a sin for journalism to entertain - indeed, that one way you can get across a point about which you feel passionately is to make people smile while they are absorbing it. If you disagreed with a Safire column, fine (I usually did); but at least it got the juices...
Though that isn't to say the baby boomers, the most marketed-to generation on record, are suddenly being ignored. They're still influencing design too, just not like they used to. With the kids off to college, "they're not buying a five-bedroom home in the suburbs anymore," says Steve Melman, director of economic services at the National Association of Home Builders. What they do increasingly want: compact, one-story homes that are easier to get around. KB is offering twice as many single-story layouts as it was a year...
...this tax break probably isn't good policy, especially now that we seem to have left the darkest part of the housing-market woods. Here are the numbers. The IRS says 1.4 million first-time buyers have benefited from the credit so far; the National Association of Realtors thinks that figure will hit 1.8 million before the end of November. Meanwhile, a number of groups have estimated how many of those people wouldn't have bought houses had it not been for the tax break - about 350,000 or 400,000. In other words, some 80% of buyers would have...
...deduction is an artifact of the 1894 federal income-tax code, under which all interest was deductible, since pretty much all interest was a business expense. There weren't really loans to buy houses back then. In other words, a massive and costly cornerstone of American housing policy isn't even something we chose...
...help that Merkel's hands are likely to be less tied in a coalition with the economically liberal Free Democrats than they were with the Social Democrats - a change that could push Germany closer to the French line on nuclear power and relations with Russia. But what isn't yet known is how warmly the Free Democrats will embrace closer cooperation with France. They won 14.6% of the vote, a record result for the party, and their leader, Guido Westerwelle, is likely to become the next Foreign Minister. His campaign focused on how to revive Germany's economy...